Fenty Beauty on Track to Outsell Kylie Cosmetics & KKW Beauty

Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty might be the newest member in a group of popular personality-driven beauty brands, but it’s moving quickly toward the front of the pack.

Although it launched in September, Fenty Beauty is proving to have a lot of sway over online beauty shoppers in the U.S. and is on track to beat out blockbuster revenues of Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Beauty and Kim Kardashian’s KKW, according to new research from Slice Intelligence, shared exclusively with WWD.

The online research firm found that while Kylie Cosmetics, which is coming up on a two-year anniversary, had the highest yearly sales, Fenty Beauty sales in its first month of operation were five times Kylie Cosmetics and 34 percent higher the following month.

In August, Jennerrevealed to WWD that her brand had sold a total of $420 million products, while the line of Kardashian’s KKW was expected to pull inmore than $14 million in sales within minutes of its June launch. KKW has since released three eau de parfums sold exclusively on her web site. Slice declined to reveal its own revenue calculations, citing company policy.

Fenty Beauty, which is sold only through Sephora, is also already ahead of the Kat Von D makeup line, and while owner LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton doesn’t break out revenue figures by brand, it’s singled out Kat Von D in disclosures for its “excellent” performance. LVMH also owns Fenty Beauty, and in October praised the brand as having “experienced an exceptional start.”

Rihanna’s line also stands out for having the customers that spend the most on beauty products in general. Slice found that Fenty Beauty fans spend an average of $471 per year in the makeup category, compared to shoppers of Kat Von D who spend $371, KKW shoppers who spend $278 and Kylie Cosmetics shoppers who spend $181.

As a group, sales from all four of the brands account for 29.2 percent of all online beauty revenue in the U.S., even though their collective customer base represents only 12 percent of shoppers.

Slice also found beauty shoppers that don’t buy any items from these four spend a relatively paltry $71 per year on makeup.

Fenty Beauty also is a big draw for a more diverse consumer base, beating out other brands on this metric. It has the most African-American and Hispanic shoppers, along with a good base of Asian customers, while white customers are the brand’s smallest consumer group.

But Slice found that Kylie Cosmetics, KKW and Kat Von D all indexed well with diverse shoppers, which make up a majority of their customers.